Few outside of Argentina remember him, but a good man died yesterday. Raul Alfonsin was the first democratically elected president of the Argentine Republic after seven years of military rule in which over 10,000 Argentinians were "disappeared" by the military in a "Dirty War" against leftist guerrillas.

The guerrilla groups, of whom the most prominent were the Montoneros, were active throughout the 1970s, and they were deadly. Anyone in the military, law enforcement, industry or finance risked being kidnapped or killed. The guerrillas bombed police stations, military barracks and apartment buildings. They were subversives whose ranks included members of normally peaceful occupations: priests, journalists, social workers, students, teachers. No one seemed able to discern who was a nonviolent leftist and who was secretly a violent revolutionary, and unrest spread throughout the country, threatening to devolve into outright civil war. Some Argentinians considered the Montoneros to be idealists, but Raul Alfonsin, a member of the centrist Radical party, never did. He condemned their cruelty and destruction.

In 1976, a military junta took control of the country and set about eradicating the guerrillas. The counterterrorist measures taken were of a brutality and magnitude that the country had never seen. The military kidnapped people it suspected of being involved in terrorism, secreting them away to hidden detention centres where they would be interrogated and tortured. Most of those kidnapped were killed, in some cases by being drugged and pushed alive out of airplanes. Mothers, fathers and relatives of people who were disappeared would go to police stations and ministries and courtrooms seeking information on those who had gone missing – only to be told that no one had any information to give.

Fearful of being placed on a target list by the government, most Argentinians fled or kept silent during those terrifying years. But Raul Alfonsin did not, loudly condemning the military government and offering help to families seeking information on their missing loved ones.

In 1983, Argentina finally ousted the military dictators and held genuine elections. No one expected Raul Alfonsin, whose Radical party had never enjoyed much public support, to win. But Alfonsin did win. He inherited a country beset by debt, inflation and bitter memories. Argentinians had high hopes that he could pull them out of the morass.

Alfonsin wanted to demonstrate to everyone that Argentina was once again a country ruled by laws, and he undertook two important things to put the Dirty War to rest: he assembled a commission to investigate the thousands of disappearances, and he put the leaders of the military junta on trial. Argentinians and observers around the world were shocked by the testimony of survivors, who gave accounts of beatings, electrocution and extrajudicial killings. A list of the missing was compiled and came to over 10,000. The generals were sentenced to prison (as were surviving guerrilla leaders), and Argentina tried to return to normal.

But the fight between extreme left and extreme right in Argentina persisted, albeit less violently. Rightists accused leftists of staging the trials of the generals as revenge for having been defeated on the battlefield. Leftists accused the centrists of going too easy on yesterday's torturers and killers. Alfonsin faced rebellions by military fascists and denunciations by neo-Stalinists.

Ultimately, as luck would have it, Alfonsin wound up stumbling as a leader for a more mundane and common reason: the economy worsened. He had inherited a budgetary disaster, and Argentinians were willing to be patient while he attempted to address it. In the end, however, Alfonsin shied away from making the choices necessary to set the country on a sustainable economic course, and inflation soared to 200 percent a month. Investment died out almost entirely, as Argentinians devoted all their economic energy to preserving what capital they could salvage. By 1989, Alfonsin had been voted out, and no one seemed to have anything kind to say about him.

Politics is unforgiving and unfair, and often scoundrels who have a run of economic good luck are remembered with undue fondness. Juan Peron subverted Argentine democracy in the 1940s and 50s, but he remains beloved by many Argentinians for having raided the national coffers showing everyone a good time. Raul Alfonsin erred on the side of fiscal timidity, but the economy wound up crushing him. His bravery and decency on more fundamental questions – his adherence to morality and legality in country that had been swept up in evil and illegality – were insufficiently acknowledged and quickly forgotten while he was in power.

But in the years after, people came to appreciate once again what he had done for Argentina and human rights. When a traumatised nation most desperately needed an upright head of state, Alfonsin proved to be the most upright of men.